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Monday, December 31, 2012

I started Duck and Cover in August 2006, which means that I have now spent almost 6.5 years willfully inflicting a daily psychic wound on myself by reading Mallard Fillmore.

When I started, and for the first few years, I was usually taken aback by the audacity of Mallard Fillmore's rampant mendacity. It angered me, much as 6 years of Republican mendacity on the national stage angered me. And I wanted to correct the falsehoods and require that discourse be fact-based. In some extremely small way, it was my protest against President Bush and his cronies.

But for the past year or so, the task has become much more boring, much more pedestrian. Which is not to say that Mallard Fillmore (and those for whom he carries water) are any less mendacious. Probably they are more so. And that is not to say that their discourse is more fact-based. Probably it is less so.

But, frankly, I don't think Mallard Fillmore is actually trying anymore. Mallard Fillmore itself has become an empty husk. Where once it was rage-filled and self-righteous, now it simply repeats, in the most plodding terms imaginable, whatever is currently in a loop on Fox, Drudge, Townhall, or Breitbart.

There's barely any actual anger in Mallard Fillmore anymore...whether over the ginned up outrage or over the fact that no one is allowing themselves to be ginned up. Sure, the words are there, but it's just a pantomime. It's too tiring, I think, for Mallard Fillmore to generate anger and outrage knowing no one feeds on it anymore. Mallard Fillmore has become pathetic (though not pitiable).

Perhaps it's because 6 years of this have inoculated me to Right Wing faux outrage in a way that it seems (I hope) the nation and the media writ large are growing weary of and inoculated against as well. (Witness the impotent fury of the Right Wing over Benghazi while everyone else ignored them.) My tendency, now, is less outrage or desire to de-bunk falsehood and more of a bored shrug. It's The Boy Who Cried Wolf for the 21st Century.

In any event, all of that is to say that I am thinking of ceasing to update the blog. If Mallard Fillmore isn't going to try anymore, then why should I? Why not use the time each day I spend on this blog for something actually useful? And why not return to that blissful pre-2006 state when I never read Mallard Fillmore? Barely even knew it existed?

That said, if someone were interested in taking over, I would certainly entertain that. Just let me know in the comments!

OK, Mallard...what's your solution? What's going on now is simply the Free Market at work. College Football is a huge business, with the lure of Pro Football even bigger. So the focus is on Football, not academics.

Are you proposing some sort of Nanny State solution in which the law decides who can play football and who can't, based on factors other than their capability to play football?

Because, other than to gripe about something that has a thinly veiled racist element to it, I have no idea what your point is.

Monday, December 24, 2012

Republican positions are funnier than the 47% of dead-enders who still believe in them realize. And Joe Biden was using that fact to wipe the floor with the "intellectual giant" of the Republican movement, otherwise known as the guy who, unlike most people, didn't outgrow Atlas Shrugged.

But, you know, it's just those darned Liberals who claim the Republican party is not friendly toward non-whites. If only those uppity minorities understood what's good for them, they'd vote Republican. Unfortunately, however, they are just lazy moochers who view the Government as Santa Claus.

Sunday, December 16, 2012

Mallard Fillmore: The only thing wrong about Mitt Romney's 47% remark is that he got the percentage wrong. since 51% of moochers and takers voted for President Obama. But don't worry, continuing to insult 51% of America will win us the next election!

Friday, December 14, 2012

The language of this makes it pretty hard to understand what Mallard is getting at, but I think he's suggesting that he doesn't believe Republicans, in the wake of their disastrous 2012 Election results, need to re-package their message (let alone change their positions). Mallard is arguing for the status quo, in the apparent hope that if they just shout their beliefs loudly one more time, this time everyone will get it and we'll all become Republicans.

Because, you know, it's not that their policies are wrong, it's just that everyone else's attitude toward their policies is wrong.

And one wonders how they led themselves to ignore all available facts and believe they were about to score a huge Electoral victory in 2012?

Monday, December 10, 2012

President Obama campaigned on a pledge to raise taxes on income over $250,000, which amounts to an increase on the top 2% of earners.

Nothing about that has changed. Mind you, after January 1, if no deal is made, it is possible for taxes to revert to pre-Bush level on everyone. That would, however, be 100% the Republican's fault, as there are already bills available to be voted on that would prevent this, and only Republican intransigency over tax cuts for the top 2% is stopping that from happening.

Thursday, December 06, 2012

After being President for 4 years, Mallard still thinks the President hasn't been vetted. And if people would just buy into all the conspiracy theories that Breitbart and Town Hall make up, which Fox propagates wildly, and which credulous idiots like himself believe...then President Romney!

Wednesday, December 05, 2012

Well, at least we finally know what "lesson" Mallard learned from the election. It's that 51% of America are greedy moochers, sucking the blood of Real Americans as they live in the lap of luxury courtesy of Government hand-outs.